Surprising Hope
by Tracy Diane Miller
Summary: Meredith Carson returns with a special mission.


Surprising Hope  
  
Summary: Meredith Carson becomes the surprising hope in her quest to prove  
  
Gary's innocence in the murder of Frank Scanlon. This very short story was  
  
inspired by "The Paper", "His Girl Thursday", and "Fatal Edition".  
  
Disclaimer: Early Edition characters belong to whoever created them. No  
  
copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made.  
  
Author: Tracy Diane Miller  
  
E-mail address: tdmiller82@hotmail.com  
  
  
  
Surprising Hope  
  
Vegas has been dubbed "Sin City". But Vegas, with its flamboyant shows, the  
  
neon lights along the strip whispering "Come hither" to the curious with  
  
wanderlust and craving excitement, doesn't hold the monopoly on behavior  
  
that is never dull. Vegas has showgirls parading along its stages with  
  
bright costumes and sometimes sporting ostentatious feathers like peacocks  
  
in heat. Vegas has boisterous casinos and hopeful patrons dreaming of  
  
instant wealth. And Vegas has David Cassidy, that 1970s pop icon (the root  
  
of scores of teenage girls' fantasies) whose ballad "I Think I Love You"  
  
sent adolescent pulses racing.  
  
But Vegas has competition: Washington, DC  
  
Washington, DC is never dull, either. With its old and new money and  
  
boasting political intrigue and a power elite of larger than life  
  
characters, DC is often the hotbed of controversy. The machinations of  
  
the rich and famous feed the grist mill and satisfy a hungry media whose  
  
appetite is whetted for juicy gossip.  
  
Could the media be accused of prostituting itself to an audience of readers  
  
and viewers craving tantalization rather than serious news stories? Maybe.  
  
Television executives worship the god of ratings where sky rocketing numbers  
  
mean advertising dollars. Advertising dollars translate into wealth for the  
  
network bigwigs. The print media has its own deity, circulation, with the  
  
same desired blessing- more subscribers equaling more money in the pockets  
  
of the executives.  
  
In a newsroom in the heart of DC, she stared at the story that had come  
  
hot off the wire service. The Fourth Estate was abuzz with the news about  
  
the murder of one of its own. Frank Scanlon. She had no love lost for  
  
Scanlon. She remembered the Pulitzer Prize columnist from her illustrious  
  
career as a Sun-Times reporter. Scanlon was an oily man, an unscrupulous  
  
miscreant and immoral leech that happily sucked the dignity out of people  
  
through his scathing columns. Scanlon lacked a conscience. Exploiting other  
  
people's misery was his signature. Scanlon wasn't just a dog with a bone.  
  
He was a pit bull that gnawed into its victim's flesh. His untimely death  
  
did not signal a bevy of mourners.  
  
Her concern wasn't about the death of a journalistic brethren. Rather, she  
  
focused on the man accused of Scanlon's murder.  
  
Gary Hobson.  
  
The copy just off the wire service painted a picture of Hobson as a  
  
psychopath who had murdered Scanlon because the celebrated columnist was on  
  
the verge of exposing Hobson's "secrets". Meredith heard the whisperings  
  
of her colleagues in the newsroom who were filling in their own blanks with  
  
the connotation of the word secrets. And the fact that Hobson sported  
  
"All-American" good looks further fueled the flames of the media's prurient  
  
interests. There had to be dirt there, a lot of dirt. Scanlon had  
  
uncovered the dirt on Hobson and Hobson killed him. Pure and simple.  
  
Meredith heard her colleagues taking bets on the likelihood of a conviction.  
  
It was 10-1 for conviction. Some of the wagers felt that with a good  
  
lawyer, Hobson could get off on voluntary manslaughter, a "heat of passion"  
  
crime. Good-looking guy with volatile temper kills reporter. Hobson could  
  
serve maybe 10-20 in prison. Others suspected that the district attorney was  
  
going for first degree murder with a life sentence as the probable  
  
punishment. Reporters wanted to fly to Chicago for the trial. This trial  
  
was expected to be juicer than a T-bone steak.  
  
Then it happened. Another story came off the wire service with the blazing  
  
headline of "Hobson Escapes From Custody." Fled by leaping from a court  
  
house window before his arraignment. Demented fugitive on the loose. An  
  
indicia of guilt if ever there was one.  
  
Meredith felt a chill run down her spine as she read the story. She gazed at  
  
the mug shot photo of Gary accompanying the story. Those beautiful mud  
  
green eyes stared back her. Those eyes looked afraid not lethal. They were  
  
not the eyes of a killer. She'd bet her life on that.  
  
When she first met Gary, she wasn't as generous in her character assessment.  
  
He was in Hawks' office and she stopped in. Gary tried a pathetic attempt  
  
at flirtation by telling her that he read her work. But he had confused her  
  
with Rebecca from the Tribune.  
  
Strike one.  
  
Then she realized that he knew something about the story that she was  
  
working on, information about the New Jersey plates that would only have  
  
been known if he were involved with the "bad guys". Her desk had been  
  
rigged with an explosive device in which Morris, the Sun-Times archivist,  
  
had been injured. Gary came to see Morris in the hospital. She  
  
misinterpreted a remark that he had made as a threat on her life and he  
  
joked about being a hit man for the mob. Later, she realized that he was a  
  
good guy, a good guy with a secret. She was an investigative reporter so  
  
she could smell secrets a mile away. Why did he live in a hotel? How did  
  
he know the things that he knew? The mystery that was Gary Hobson excited  
  
her. She didn't want to admit it to herself, but the man himself excited  
  
her even more. His steamy kisses left her sweaty with desire. He was like  
  
a sleeping volcano, a wonderment to behold but swelling with such intensity.  
  
She couldn't get enough of him.  
  
She discovered his secret while they were trapped in the basement of the  
  
Sun-Times by killers and awaiting death. That paper that he carried held  
  
advance information about the future. They were rescued and clumsily began  
  
what she assumed was the beginning of a relationship. Loving gazes (neither  
  
of them would admit that to the other), a few hot kisses, and Moo Goo Gai  
  
Pan by the dim light of the lamp on her desk and then...  
  
Nothing.  
  
No phone calls. It was goodbye Gary. He had intruded upon every fiber of  
  
her being and his Houdini act had adversely affected her work. Determined  
  
to confront him as to why he had turned cold all of the sudden to the  
  
prospect of a relationship, she spiked a story about a toddler's fall from  
  
an El platform knowing that it would bring him out of hiding. Her deception  
  
worked. When she talked to him, he still wanted to run. She challenged  
  
him. He wasn't running from the fact that she had discovered his secret. He  
  
was running because she had invaded his heart and that terrified him.  
  
A short while later, she waited for him outside of his hotel room. She told  
  
him about her impending job in DC. She wondered whether he would allow her  
  
to walk out of his life. His answer was pulling her close for a smoldering  
  
kiss that started outside of his room and continued once they entered the  
  
room. They both had courted the idea of intimacy, but that night, she slept  
  
on his couch...alone.  
  
But their relationship never really had a chance. She was a curious  
  
reporter, a disciple of Pandora, and he was the guy who knew the future.  
  
Even as she promised him that she wouldn't look at The Paper she knew that  
  
it was a promise that she couldn't keep.  
  
A lack of trust (on both their parts) was the nail that had shut the coffin  
  
to their premature relationship.  
  
She took the job in DC. He told her that he'd call her when she got settled  
  
and he did. But she didn't take his call. Instead, she listened to his  
  
voice on her answering machine. He called several more times over the  
  
ensuing weeks and she never picked up when she was in her apartment and  
  
never called him back when she returned home to an answering machine message  
  
from him. Finally, the calls stopped. It was better that way. When they  
  
stared into each other's eyes that day on the platform as she said goodbye  
  
to Chicago for her new life, she knew that she was saying goodbye to him.  
  
And she sensed that he knew that, too.  
  
Now, he was running for his life. Why hadn't The Paper provided him with an  
  
advance warning him about his arrest for Scanlon's murder? What had Scanlon  
  
uncovered about him? Did Scanlon know about The Paper? Who really killed  
  
Scanlon? Why?  
  
Her reporter's instincts were in overdrive. But her motivation wasn't to  
  
break a big story, solve a murder case for journalistic accolades. Her goal  
  
was to save his life. Gary needed her.  
  
Meredith arranged to go to Chicago. It was easy convincing her boss that  
  
she should have the Hobson story because of her ties to the Sun-Times. She  
  
had proven herself during her tenure in DC. Her boss was seeing a Pulitzer  
  
in her future. She was seeing Gary Hobson vindicated. That was her only  
  
goal and she would do anything she could to help him.  
  
He was the surprising hope that had awakened feelings within her. And now  
  
she would be his surprising hope in proving his innocence.  
  
  
  
The End. 


End file.
